A lot of people bring up good points on hwy not too as well. I think they've got good ones. We lose anymore stats or skills and we'll be even closer to Halo: Fantasy or Call of Duty: Blade and Spell

These improvements would make both things more relevant and much more useful. The hurt they provide the game as you put it is that they're holding it back from something better.

You did read that luck is being moved to make it useful, so consider that when you consider the issue.

Take a look at the agility (dexterity if you will) skills then.

Daggerfall: Archery, Backstabbing, Critical Strike, Hand to Hand, Pickpocket, Short Blade, Stealth
Morrowind: Block, Light Armor, Marksman, Sneak
Oblivion: Marksman, Security, Sneak

How many of these were put into speed? Block went into Endurance (probably for the better), Hand to Hand went to Speed, then to Strength, Light Armor went to Speed. They've been trading and swapping skills between the two attributes so much, I'm pretty sure they don't see the difference between the two.

Well, if Athletics takes care of your running and sprinting speed, it should clear up the overlap.

Luck is kept in the character creation, and on a more dramatic scale.

If Athletics affects your raw sprinting and running in general, it eats up the whole of speed without awkwardly shoving light armor into that category.


Sure, but I'm saying the run speed should be taken care of with the athletics skill.

So the system is somehow more complex because we never thought about it?

We can't institutionalize bad ideas just because we're scared of doing the right thing.

if they remove leveling all together I will be a happy camper

level skills (like gothic)

is way better

I agree, and to do that they'd have to tie the attributes right to the skills, which this allows for. Especially with luck, it's hanging in the wind already and this gives it solid ground in the character creation.

Good points. Like vadagar, I agree with removing levelling totally, much like Galsiah's levelling mod.

Yes, I could see this. But you do realize that if I were to embrace this idea, I'd be paring down my suggested skillset from 28 to 24 to make it all balance out? I guess that's still more than Oblivion had...

And to the poster arguing (good-naturedly, I admit) for the removal of personality, I'd say that the inverse should be considered first. TES hasn't exactly done a great job letting the character use social skills to advance their game, and there are many, MANY people that would like to see the role of personality expanded on, let alone just remain in the game. It need not be to the point of some Fallout junkies who crave the ability to beat the game without ever firing a gun, but certainly there's a case to be made for the potential usefulness of speechcraft, barter, and even "new" skills like streetwise and language, if properly meshed into the world. And I'd argue that something like speechcraft COULD matter in the final boss battle, if one exists - you could use the skill to convince others to join your forays as a retinue, or even to attack first as fodder to weaken the opponent for you.

Nope.... instead of axing luck they shuold make it more important, change speed to dexterity and it makes sense.


About using the Gothic system: as much as I like Gothic I'd rather keep that system in Gothic. The thing I like about TES is it's unique leveling and attribute/skill system.


Personally, I'm amazed people want to remove attributes and or skills. Make them more meaningful, don't remove them. You want to play a more casual RPG go play fable

This has nothing to do with making the game casual. If you read the first post you'd see that luck is kept, making it more important. Next time read the whole post.

Someone didn't read the first post. :laugh:

Ah damn it.... this is what I get from speed reading. My apologies

The "There's two attributes on the list that we just don't need" kinda set me off on the wrong foot. Still, it's my fault for not reading the rest of it with the same interest.

i agree with you about speed, but not luck.
sure its hard to level up luck, but say you get an amulet that does +20 luck.
i just think it adds to immersion that you can find maybe a lucky ring or something.
its not like anyone is going to have a lower base luck than any other person anyways so why not? its balanced.

Great thread, truly enjoyed reading. Speed to me also involves quickness, agility is something else all entirely. Speed/Quickness can support small weapons, light armor(since light armor gives you some protection while allowing your quickness to evade attacks), athletics/swimming/running. I think throwing in skills that don't make sense I understand and agree. However, I think there are skills that fit into that. I've always maxed out Luck and have enjoyed playing a "lucky" rogue. But you make a compelling argument that it can't really be measured as an attribute. As much as I hate to agree, I pretty much have to as it's logical. Lastly, Personality to me, has always made zero sense. If I'm an a**hole, but I pump some points into Personality, does that become better over time? No. Personality adds very little to the game and if you have enough coin, is completely useless. I think that should go before speed.

Now, if we're going to talk about attributes to get rid of. We should also see if there are some that could replace those. For instance, instead of Personality, what about some other social skill where you could ingratiate, manipulate, coerce etc? It would allow you to complete tasks in a variety of ways and add more depth to the skill.

Instead of just speed, maybe some other quick twitch would make more sense. It could add pickpocketing, short weapons, back stabbing, lt armor etc.

I'm all for improving, but I think if you take away from one side of the ledger, you have to give some thought to what could be added to the other side.

Or bump it to 36 or 42

There are quite a few option on how to fill the skill registers. I'd go for a list like this, though I didn't have the greatest luck coming up with new personality skills.

Strength: Greatsword (2 handers), Mauls, Large Mauls (2 handers), Marksman (with crossbow), Polearms

Agility: Sword, Acrobatics, Athletics, Stealth, Concealed Weapons (daggers and thrown small weapons), Theft (lockpicking, pickpocket, and shoplifting)

Endurance: Hand to Hand, Equestrian, Shield, Outdoorsman, Climbing, Chain Weapons

Personality: Streetwise, Etiquette, Mercantile, Diplomacy

Willpower: Illusion, Enchanting, Destruction, Dynamism (replaces alteration, includes force type powers like telekinesis), Thaumaturgy (religious magic)

Intelligence: Mysticism, Daedric (replaces Conjuration), Necromancy, Alchemy, Medical

I totally agree with Luck.

I always left it alone because anything I would invest into luck I could invest into something useful.

Speed always confused me. I agree with you that it could be removed, but slightly less strongly than luck

Though I would suggest an addition: Dexterity. Agility refers to the movement of the whole body, quickly,skillfully and elegently. Dexterity refers to complex movements and control of the hands. It seems that dexterous skills have traditionally been lumped in with Agility in TES games.

Dexterity should be useful for skills like Lock Pick, Marksman, Pickpocket. Basically anything than is dependent on the hands, while agility should be for anything dependent on quick or skillful movement.

Oh god, just leave everything be. I don't want any changes. Speed is fine. Luck is fine. Those two tiny aspects of the game don't need to be absolutely perfect. They should be "good" for everyone. Not "perfect" for Shades.

Here's what I think attributes should be:

- they should range from a value of 1 to 10
- they should determine at what value your skills start, and only this
- with regards to the previous point, strength should determine how much weight you can carry; endurance, how much life you have
- they should NOT be subject to improvement. No bobbleheads, no nothing. Once you set them at the start of your game, it's done. Live with it.

So, in essence, with regards to a few exceptions to the rule, skills would be the only thing governing what you can and cannot do with your character. How fast can I run and for how long? Athletics. How much defence do I have? Heavy and Light armor. And so on. I thought Fallout 3 had this department covered more efficiently.

Haha, you're funny.

How exactly is luck not important? Lmfao.

Luck modifies all your skills (except Athletics and Acrobatics) behind the scenes as follows:

SkillModifiedByLuck = SkillInQuestion + ( ( fActorLuckSkillMult * Luck ) + iActorLuckSkillBase )

With default settings the formula goes as follows:

SkillModifiedByLuck = SkillInQuestion + ( 0.4 * (Luck - 50 ) )

they are fine. I vote leave them alone.

the argument that luck could only be raised by one point when leveling is meaningless. Your attributes determine how high you can level your character. If you covet the x5 multiplier for each level on all of your abilities then you are restricting yourself to around 20th level. If you take only one point in an ability you can gain many more levels. The highest level I reached is 87 by avoiding the ability multipliers at level up. More magica more hit points and the ability to use the same character for much longer. Having speed and luck in the mix allows for greater level advancement. They are certainly not useless or in need of 'fixing'.

At first I was thinking "Shades is crazy!" but then I read the post and I'm thinking "hey, Shades is making a very valid point, and I agree." So, there you have it.

Alternatively, if Agility was changed to Dexterity, and we kept Speed...?

Also, Luck is kind of cool, but it really played more of a role, I think, back in TESIII due to the whole dice roll thing. In TESIV, Luck was useless due to player skill being the main factor for things like blocking, successful attacks, etc.

I didn't really notice what it did do, but it was probably just the loot attribute.

What? Removing attributes? BLASPHEMY!
There are some valid points you make though, but those ideas are best saved if you're going to make a TES pen&paper rpg.

I agree that LUCK usually is not something you usually would want to put points in, but it's not useless. It's an attribute that reflects your confidence.
AGILITY is your balance and hand-eye coordination, SPEED is your reflexes and how fast you can move around. Two very different things.

Not saying that the whole leveling system in TES is carved in stone, because there are indeed some problems with it. But it's not the philosophy behind the attributes that is flawed imo.

I'm indifferent about Luck, but yeah Speed should definitely be merged with Agility.

Luck could be cut out, but the new system you proposed (for luck) doesn't work for me. I would rather see high luck scores have various perks, but I honestly don't care what happens to the attribute at all.

Also, speed and agility,in the context of the game, are not synonymous. They are meant to represent different things. Just call agility dexterity and it works. Speed can stay or go, but if it goes the new skill distribution should make use of old skills. No idea for a new skill seems to fit.